The Wonder brings so many of my favourite elements together – a mystery, faith, a love story, and Ireland. It basically hit all the right notes for me. Anna is a young Irish girl, who is gaining fame for being able to live without eating for weeks. Lib, an English nurse and self-proclaimed skeptic, is hired to observe and substantiate the claims that this is an honest-to-goodness miracle. Tensions develop between Lib and Anna’s family, as well as members of the community, as she tries […]
Wonder No More, This Book is Good!
The wonder mentioned in the title is a young girl named Anna who lives in a small village in Ireland and has reportedly not eaten any food for four months. The protagonist is a widowed English nurse, trained by Florence Nightingale, who comes to the village as an impartial judge to examine the claims of the village. The nurse is judgmental of the poverty of the Irish village and skeptical of the community’s claim that this girl is somehow getting nourishment from God. Lib the […]
You can never go home again
A spring evening in 1985, nineteen-year-old Frank Mackie is waiting impatiently outside for his girlfriend Rosie Daly, as they plan to elope and move to London, making a new life for themselves away from the hard life of the Dublin working poor. When she doesn’t show, Frank goes looking for her in the abandoned house a few door down, and finds a note that suggests she’s gone off without him. As Frank’s father is a violent drunk, his mother is neurotic and shrewish and his […]
Historical Fantasy Takes a Weird Turn
I finally got around to re-reading Betraying Season, the sequel to Bewitching Season, and now I remember why I was so reluctant to tackle this one again. Not only is it not particularly good, but it’s also weird. If the first book is a pleasant afternoon tea in a sunlit parlor, then the sequel is more like gnawing on stale fried chicken by the light of the full moon–odd, unsatisfying, and more than a little off-putting to witness. After her twin sister marries at the […]